White powder? It's TiO<sub>2</sub> – honest!
Some 40 years ago, Prof Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth circuit element to complement the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor. Called the memristor, the device works like a resistor with a memory, offering features not available from combinations of the other three elements.
It was 37 years after Prof Chua published his prediction that the memristor was finally created by an HP Labs team lead by Stan Williams. Now, the technology is well on its way to commercialisation; initially as a faster, more robust replacement for flash memory.
There was much discussion of memristors at the recent DATE conference in Dresden, where Stan Williams updated attendees on the progress. The importance of the event was underlined by the presence of Prof Chua himself.
HP Labs' work has been based on titanium dioxide. Apparently, someone thought it would be a good idea to take a sample of TiO2 to Dresden. What they didn't consider was the reaction of the security staff to someone carrying a quantity of white powder through San Francisco airport.
